Veterans speak to students at Aloha High School's Living History Day

View full sizeCasey Parks, The OregonianRetired Navy Chief Warrant Officer Forrest Soth spoke to Aloha High School students Wednesday.

Retired Army Colonel Herb Hirst set a paper plate down on a table in the Aloha High School teacher's lounge then turned to Marine Sgt. Tim Arbogast, 79, before choosing a drink.

"I'm not a Marine, so I can only do one thing at a time," Hirst joked.

"You must be Navy," said Forrest Soth, a retired Navy Chief Warrant Officer.

"No, I'm Army. But we always pick on Marines," Hirst, 73, said. "They sent us to school for that."

The men were three of 50 veterans speaking to Aloha High School today for the school's Living History Day. After a lunch of Monkey's Sub sandwiches, cokes and some old-fashioned ribbing, the men eased down the teenager-filled halls toward classrooms.

Soth, a former Beaverton City Council member, is 91 years old, but he moved through the halls fairly quickly, only barely leaning on his cane. He slipped into a classroom, where a desk was waiting for him in a cluster with five students. Soth started talking at once about his service in the Navy's during World War II and the Korean War.

At the beginning of World War II, Soth was in the amphibious forces, ferrying soldiers from a base to the sea under enemy fire.

"This is what I looked like," he told the students, holding up a paper copy of a photo of a handsome man in uniform.

Soth talked without pause for a few minutes. He speaks softly, so students leaned toward him, smiling and nodding intermittently. About five minutes in, he asked the students, "How many have you have heard of Guadalcanal?"

View full sizeCasey Parks, The OregonianSoth brought old newspapers to show students.

The students shook their heads no.

"That's not surprising," he said. "But in my view, it was the most important battle of World War II. It was the first major offensive operation against the Japanese. It paved the way for the lessons we learned. It was two years before Normandy."

Soth produced a yellowed brochure and began to read about the battle, which began Aug. 7, 1942, on the South Pacific Island. The brochure included a quote from Japanese Admiral Tanaka.

"There was no question that Japan's doom was sealed with the losing of the struggle for Guadalcanal," Soth read.

"Students are actually interested. That's the part that means the most to me," Soth said later. "I don't feel students today get a good United States history."

Soth tries to speak to area students about six times a year. The talks are a chance to fill in gaps in their history lessons, he says, but they're also a chance to talk about the most defining moments of his own life. Two decades ago, Soth used to meet 30 or so other World War II veterans once a month to talk about those moments. Most of them have passed away, though. Now, there are only three men left. One is an Alzheimer's ward, so Soth and another veteran meet him there once a month.

Over lunch, Soth told the other veterans about a video he saw called "What you are is where you were when," which basically posited that when something significant happens to you, that event shapes who you are forever. For instance, he told the guys, he does not use credit cards because the depression taught him to only buy what he could afford.

Back in the classroom, Soth told students that what people call post traumatic stress disorder was called battle fatigue when he was a soldier. "It's a reaction of the human brain to some action that occurred that the brain cannot encompass. Sometimes it takes 20 years and some minor event to trigger it. Maybe you see the flash of a camera, and it's there."

The students eventually asked questions. Someone had typed a list of suggested questions, and the teens picked from that list. Why did you join? What motivated you during tough times? What was the hardest thing you had to do?

"Watch burials at sea," he said. "I still get a frog in my throat just thinking about that."

What was your most memorable experience?

That last one was easy. That was Guadalcanal, his first time in an actual combat situation, he said.

"I never knew that one person, meaning me, could be so scared and still carry out a job."